Self-Talk Success Inside secrets to manage your mind revealed

What is self-talk?
Self-talk is the internal voice that each one of us has inside our head. Sometimes it says positive things and at other times it says negative things. This voice acts as a narrator as we think about and interpret situations on a day-to-day basis. This internal self-talk helps direct our mind to create mental pictures based on what we say to ourselves. With these pictures we run ‘internal movies’ in our mind. What types of ‘movies’ do you run in your mind? Do you run movies where you are watching the worst-case scenario happen? Are you the hero or the victim in your movies? Do you imagine yourself as capable and self-confident or bumbling and incompetent? The profound truth is, you are the director of your own movies! If you are tired of watching those ‘horror movies’ in your head then you can take control and produce the thoughts and images that will empower, enrich, and transform the quality of your life! Here is a story to illustrate my message:

There is an old Native American story of two Indians sitting by a campfire. One was a wise old elder of the
tribe, the other a young warrior. The elder Indian says to the young warrior, “there are two dogs who live inside me. One is a grey dog that is negative and filled with fear and anger. The other is a white dog that is positive and filled with love. The grey dog is constantly trying to attack the white dog.” The young warrior said, “Who wins?” the elder answered, “Whoever I feed the most.”

The conscious and sub-conscious mind
The conscious mind is the analytical part of our mind. We use this part of our mind to make our day-to-day decisions. It also holds our short-term memory. It can process seven things plus or minus two bits of information per second. For example, you might be consciously aware of what’s on your computer screen right now, the sound of the radio in the background, the temperature of the room, the feel of the chair you are sitting in, the light from the lamp reflecting in the room, and the feel of your feet on the carpet. By contrast, the sub-conscious part of our mind is able to process two million bits of information per second! Your powerful sub-conscious mind is like a super computer. It regulates all of your body functions and millions of other things going on around you that the conscious mind is unaware of. The sub-conscious mind is also the seat of your emotions, imagination, long term memory, and all of your behavior patterns. Like a computer, the sub-conscious mind does whatever it is programmed to do. It doesn’t know the difference between what is fact of fiction, only what is continually programmed into it. We program our sub-conscious through our self-talk and the images we hold in our mind! The sub-conscious mind is a servomechanism, a goal-seeking device. The goal is determined by our self-talk and internal movies we run in our mind. The conscious mind feeds the internal dialogue and pictures that the sub-conscious picks up on and acts upon.

Tools for changing your self-talk
Can we learn how to reprogram our mind if we are running programs that no longer serve us? If so, how do we do it? We can learn to reprogram negative patterns by changing our self-talk and our internal movies. The following processes are easy to learn, all it takes is a small investment of time to practice these mental exercises. Give yourself at least a month of daily practice (15 min. a day) and notice what changes have taken place. Once you understand how powerful they are, you may even want to practice them in one form of another for the rest of your life!

1.Awareness- Focus on becoming aware of what you say to yourself throughout the day. Particularly notice the negative things you say about yourself. You may even want to write them down on a 3x5 card. Awareness is the first step to making positive changes.

2.Stop, Cancel! – Once you are aware of some of the negative things you are saying about yourself, you can start to reprogram yourself by using the following technique. When you say something negative about yourself and want to challenge it, mentally say to yourself ‘Stop, cancel out!’ Or for an even more powerful effect you can say it out loud. You may even want to add an image in your mind of a stop sign being flashed in front of you. The next step is to immediately change your internal language with something positive replacing the negative self-talk. The next technique will show you specifically the kind of language you want to use.

3.Creating Positive Self-Talk- These five guidelines will help you create your own positive self-talk:

The Five P’s
·Present- State your self-talk in the present “I am.” Also, use the word “You are”.

·Positive-Use positive solution focused language. Say what you want to happen, not what you don’t want to happen.

·Personal-Use language that is real for you. You don’t need to use fluffy ‘pie in the sky’ language.

·Passion-Put some passion behind the words when you speak your positive self-talk.

·Practice-The more you practice using positive self-talk the easier and more natural it will become.

One key to remember is you don’t have to try to change your self-talk every time you say something negative about yourself. There is no need to create a constant battle in your mind between your positive and negative self-talk. You can choose when you want to use it! The times you choose not to do battle with your negative internal voice you can just be aware of what you are saying and then add this statement after the negative self-talk, “ I choose to let those negative thoughts go. They have no power over me, only that which I give them, and I choose to let them go.”

4.Use the power of visualization-Since you are the “producer and director” of the movies you play in your mind, you can change the images. If you imagine negative images of yourself, you can use the following technique- Freeze the negative image in your mind just as if you took a photo of it. Next, change the image to black and white. Notice how the intensity of the image greatly decreases or goes away altogether. Now, shrink the image down to the size of a pea and send it off into distant space. Next, replace the negative image with a positive image of how you want to be in the situation. Really bring in all of your senses (visual, auditory, kinesthetic). Make the image in full color and bring it closer to you. Now run these positive images as a movie seeing yourself at your best. Use your positive self- talk to narrate your new empowering movie! Keep repeating this process until you can’t even pull up the old negative movie anymore.

Example of the stop cancel technique with positive self-talk and visualization
Tina is out of shape, overweight and wants to start exercising consistently, but her negative self-talk starts up every time she even thinks of starting an exercise program. After learning some basic tools for self-talk development, Tina begins to become aware of what she has been saying to herself. When the negative self-talk starts up, Tina begins to use her tools.

“I’m so out of shape. I can hardly even climb stairs anymore without getting tired.”
(Imagines she is gasping for air as she struggles to make it up a flight of steps).
“Stop, cancel”.
(Replaces with)
“I exercise daily and I enjoy it! I look forward to the surge of energy, and how good I feel about myself for taking care of my body.”
(Tina can also state her self-talk using “you are”).
“You are exercising daily and enjoying it! You look forward to the surge of energy, and how good you feel about yourself for taking care of your body.”

(Tina replaces the old negative image of her struggling to climb the stairs by turning it into a still black and white photo, then shrinking it down to the size of a pea and sending it out into space. She then replaces the old image with a new image of herself exercising, having fun, other people commenting on how healthy she looks, and looking at herself in the mirror with the body she desires to have. Tina makes these new images in color and makes them bigger, brighter and close to her. Tina runs this new “internal movie” over and over until she can’t even pull up the old image).

5.Some great books to read on the subject of self-talk are:

*What To Say When You Talk To Yourself by Shad Helmstetter
*Taming Your Gremlin by Rick Carson

6.Work with a professional- If you feel you need professional assistance to learn to manage your self-talk and would like to work with a professional in this area, find a certified Hypnosis Coach. A Hypnosis Coach is a trained professional who uses a combination of hypnotherapy and motivational coaching techniques to help remove and replace negative self-talk, limiting beliefs and fears that keep people stuck. For more information on the benefits of working with a Hypnosis Coach go to my website at www.lifebalancehypnosis.com or contact me at 503-760-6742.